Hello folks, how are you today? I hope that you are enjoying the sunshine, wherever you are. In the UK we are warm as a piece of pie and basking in the rays. Unfortunately, it's not going to last, but it's fun while it's here. As always at the end of July, I have a staff barbeque at home and I bet, next weekend is going to be soggy, with rain showers, and the weather will be most annoying and uncooperative. Just now....... .....this is what it looks like, and I'm off to snooze in the garden when the sun goes down a bit! I made a necklace for a sunshiny day - cool glass beads, loads of them in a six strand necklace, tiny silvery medallions set with red gemstones catching the light of the sun. It will look great over a dark dress and is quiet enough to take you to the office, but will also go to lunch or the pub of an evening. Sunshiny DayI've been in court for the last two weeks on official business. I got up early and took a train in to Birmingham, which is about 30 minutes away from where I live. Every day I got dressed and went into my jewellery cabinet and wore a necklace by Caprilicious. I got on the same train every day, and every day it was the same carriage, and by coincidence, the same seat! I took a picture of what I was wearing and put it on Instagram - some way to pass the time! Here are a few of them. The Hospital Uniform Policy wont allow me to wear any jewellery to work while I'm on the wards, so it was fun to wear one of my necklaces each day.
That's me for this week, folks. Have a fabulous weekend, and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx
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Hello folks, it's bright and sunny today, the day following the summer solstice. The longest day of the year has passed us by and winter approaches. Am I going crazy or has summer gone by, wet and windy with not a sunbeam in sight? Where are those long hazy days the songs go on about, with the sun beating down on you, watching the ships roll in and away again? I decided to make a piece of jewellery to cheer my terminal sadness up, and kick start what the meterologists are calling a 'heat wave' - well, I'll believe it when I see it, is my reply. The garden is looking lush however, with all the water it has had. We've not been able to mow the lawn with the ground below being so soggy, so the grass is green and lush, and daisies are popping up all over the place. Summer SweetnessMade with slab nuggets of stabilised turquoise, faceted green Tibetan turquoise, faceted lapis lazuli I brought back from India and two of the largest baroque pearls I could find in my stash, this necklace is fun, yet quieter than most of the pieces I make. It will say quietly but firmly, that the wearer is a woman of taste and refinement and can be worn to the office, meetings, or even a lunch date. I'm going to court next week and will certainly try it out. I find wearing jewellery makes me feel better and more confident about myself and always wear some when I'm expecting to be in a sticky situation - it's like body armour, only around the neck or wrist. I'm going to be in court for the next couple of weeks - drat! just when I had a new idea for a piece of bead embroidered jewellery. Maybe I'll start it off this weekend before I lose the impetus, as this is a new idea and the piece will be full of texture and colour. That's me for this week, folks, have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you soon with whatever comes out of my new idea - after all it's one thing to have a new idea and another to execute it and get the desired result. See you soon, Until then xx Hello folks, how are you this week? Many apologies for being missing in action over the last few weeks but I've been having a few problems with my eyes and haven't been in a position to make anything. It's been a couple of years since I had my eyes tested and I thought I'd go along to the optician and have a new pair of glasses. Should have been simple, shouldn't it? Unfortunately, I had a significant change in the numbers for both long distance and near vision. I waited a week for my new glasses to be ready but sadly, the near vision ones were far from perfect and caused me severe headaches and pain behind the eyes. I had them replaced, but that took even more time than I thought and they aren't yet perfect. Perhaps I need to lower my expectations, after all, glasses can never accomodate like the real thing! With some time off from work, I decided that I had to try the new pair of glasses out and make something simple - no embroidery, just a few strings of beads, perhaps? Rummaging through my bead stash usually gives me inspiration and today was no exception. A pretty pendant cast from a shell, some vibrant turquoise beads, abalone beads that I've been meaning to use for a long time and baroque pearls - and a necklace with an oceanic theme was born. MermaidAbalone or Pāua is a seaweed eating edible sea snail. Its meat was prized by the Maori people of New Zealand and has now made it's way into other cuisines. Harvesting of this sea snail is highly regulated and it can only be picked from the sea bed by free divers - scuba diving gear is not allowed. Each abalone thus harvested needs to be over five inches long - anything smaller is returned to the sea bed. No person can own more than 20 Pāua or 2.5 Kg of the meat with the shell removed and recreational Pāua fishermen are not allowed to catch more than five per day. There is an extensive global black market in the collection and export of abalone meat. Pāua poaching is a major industry in New Zealand with many thousands being taken illegally, often undersized. The beads in this necklace are made of a mosaic of square pieces of abalone shell set in black resin, which makes them light and easy to wear. The necklace would be perfect to wear with the floaty maxi dresses of the summer which will soon be upon us, parties on the beach, cruises and barbeques - British weather permitting, of course. That's me for this week, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you soon.
Until then xx Hello folks, I hope you are in the midst of a wonderful Easter break. The people in new York are celebrating with their annual Easter Parade where they wear outlandish bonnets - in a tradition dating back to the 1870s, New Yorkers dressed up in creative and whimsical Easter finery on Sunday to take part in the annual Easter parade and bonnet festival in Manhattan, with St Patrick’s Cathedral among the best vantage points. Pictures courtesy of The Guardian. Hubby and I got back from our three week extravaganza in India with colds and coughs and sniffled our way past jet lag, only to find yet another time change this weekend. Fortunately I have a few days off after Easter to get used to the weather and springtime in the UK. As you know no doubt, I went to a wedding in Bangalore, India, possibly the last one in my family for now. My brothers son was getting wed and as my brother passed away fourteen years ago, we went in loco parentis. My sister in law was very excited and had many parties and events organised - we were totally exhausted by the end of it all. Here are some pictures for you - these are candid shots taken by members of the wedding party - the official ones are yet to make an appearance. These pictures were from a brunch hosted by my sister in law at a restaurant called 'Mirage' which was taken over that afternoon by our family, with about one hundred and fifty guests dining and dancing from lunchtime, into the early evening. We stumbled exhaustedly and not a little inebriated into bed that evening, and when we woke up, an army of decorators had put up garlands of marigolds and other flowers all around the house. This is how the facade of the house looked when we woke up in the morning. This was for the 'Haldi' ceremony - where the bride and groom are smeared with turmeric and sandalwood paste - in ancient times, it was done to keep them healthy. In modern times, it is just another excuse to party. And party we did! There were Indian drums played to welcome the guests, followed by lots of singing and dancing. This party went on till late in the evening - we were so grateful that our room was accessible - we kept going up to have a rest and coming back down to a party that was still going on with a fresh influx of guests and latecomers till late in the evening. All the guests who wanted one could have turbans tied and ladies who wanted glass bangles had a man with a cart, waiting on their every whim. The men also had pearl necklaces given to them to make them look more like maharajahs! I persuaded hubby to wear a turban for a couple of hours. This was only Day 2 and we were already exhausted. After a day's break, we headed out to the place we were staying the night before the wedding. As it was an hour and a half outside Bangalore, the extended family spent the night at the Discovery Eco Lodge, right next to the actual wedding venue - more partying into all hours - OMG, I don't know how they do it, I was exhausted already and hubby was a bit bemused by it all, to say the least, this is his first Indian wedding. We thought it would be a great idea to have our cuppa sitting outside the room, as it was so cool in the morning, but a family of monkeys who were going to their own breakfast spot had other ideas, and took a dim view of the intruders. I tried to shoo them away, but they took no notice and stood their ground. The wedding venue, Amitarasa was at the foothills of the Nandi Hills, a favourite picnic spot when I was a child. Mike was given a fabulous suit to wear which made him look like a maharjah! He was required to take part in some of the initial ceremonies with my nephew, and was tickled pink. I, on the other hand was a bit anxious especially as, being left handed, he attempted to receive flowers and other objects essential to the ceremony with his 'wrong' hand and freaked the priest out - the left hand is considered unclean by Indians for some very outdated faeco-oral reasons. I'll end here today, and pick up the thread in a further post. Have a wonderful Easter and I'll catch up with you soon.
Until then xx Hello folks, how are you today? I'm up early writing this blog because hubby forgot to shut the bedroom door when he woke up at 4 am to get a drink of water. I'm working later on today, so by the time I'd tossed and turned in bed for an hour, I thought it was a waste of time trying hard to fall asleep as it would soon be time to wake up all over again. Black IceBlack ice, sometimes called clear ice, is a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface, especially on streets. The ice itself is not black, but visually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it. It looks really pretty when the street lights shine on it because it's crystalline structure appears to glitter, but, be afraid, be very afraid! The low levels of noticeable ice pellets, snow, or sleet surrounding black ice means that areas of the ice are often nigh on invisible to drivers or people walking on it. You might not even recognise it's presence until Wham! you are lifted off your feet and find yourself sitting on your bottom on a cold and slushy surface. It is most prevalent during the early morning hours, especially after snow that melts on the roadways has a chance to refreeze overnight when the temperature drops below freezing. Black ice can also form when roadways are slick from rain and temperatures drop below freezing overnight. Black ice tends to form on paved surfaces rather than on grass or dirt. Bridges and overpasses are also more likely to develop black ice than regular roadways since the cold air flowing beneath the bridge chills the pavement even faster. Another common location is beneath trees or other shade-producing objects like buildings. The black agate druzy teardrop I worked on all of last week has a central window with a glittery surface that reminded me of Black Ice. However, sadly, I cannot demonstrate it to you in still photographs and believe me, I've tried my damndest. The geological process that forms druzy, a layer of crystals on the rock, occurs when water brings minerals onto a rock's surface. When the water evaporates, cooling occurs and the minerals are left behind to form crystals on top of the rock. Depending on the minerals, druzy gemstones can be almost any color of the rainbow, including white, pink, blue, purple, green or black. Most druse forms as cavity lining in geodes. A border of plain agate around the druzy covered area of the stone produces the most beautiful gemstones. In most druzy, the crystals appear random and stones glitter like a fistful of tiny diamonds as the viewing angle changes with movement - like Black Ice! I sent photographs of Black Ice and The Flight of the Bumblebee to one of my clients - I knew she'd love them and that they would suit her perfectly. She had a big birthday coming up and reserved both of them as a gift to herself. DM sent me a photograph wearing earrings she picked from the Caprilicious collection; her daughter seems to love them too! She once picked up a well-appreciated necklace for her mother as a birthday gift, and I thought how gratifying it was that three generation of women loved Caprilicious. DM then requested a similar pair in blue. I dug out the findings and some blue patina, and this is what I came up with - she loved them too! That's me for today, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you soon.
Until then, xx Hello folks, it's lovely to be here with you again after a short break. Quite a few people took advantage of the little mini-sale I put on in January and I was kept busy, what with working at the day job, and coming home to pack orders ready for posting out the next morning. There really wasn't time to make any more jewellery and besides, I was leaving it be till I got the perfect idea. Lo and Behold! It came to me in a flash as I looked through a glossy magazine while sitting in the dentist's waiting room. I picked up a few pieces of bumblebee jasper when I was in Jaipur in 2016 - yes, I've still got some of the stones I picked up there, as I'm a bit of a hoarder. Bumblebee jasper is made up of a combination of sulfur, calcium, aragonite, pyrite, orpinite, and realgar, set into bands or stripes. It is mined in Indonesia and Australia - one of the sites for these stones is in Bali along the base of Mount Papandayan, an active volcano. Mount Papandayan is a stratovolcano, which is a group of typically steady exploders - they don’t usually blow their top in one massive eruption. One of the main reasons bumblebee jasper is so rare is that it’s difficult to collect. Since Mount Papandayan is an active volcano, miners need to journey into a dangerous environment to gather these stones, running the risk of falling inside the volcano or burning themselves on the hot vents.This risky environment makes collecting difficult and dangerous, which adds to its scarcity. The Flight of the BumblebeeI followed the banding on the stone with the colours of my beads, but when I decided it was done and ready to attach to the necklace it still looked unfinished - a chunky amorphous and luminous baroque pearl dangling from the tip of the teardrop finished it off beautifully, in my opinion. The choker is made of five strands of rope, all held together with a magnetic clasp. If you wish to find out about the spiritual properties of bumblebee jasper, a click onto this link will tell you more. I hope you enjoy the music, too - I listened to it one morning as hubby drove me somewhere and I thought how much like a bumblebee it sounded. I was amazed when hubby told me the piece of music was called 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' by Rimsky-Korsakov. So here's my little homage to the great composer and his music. That's me for this edition of the Caprilicious Blog, folks. Have a lovely weekend and I'll catch up with you shortly.
Until then xx Hello everyone, how is 2024 treating you? As far as I am concerned, every day so far has been like a Monday - thank goodness I have something to look forward to later on in the year. The UK is soon to be hit by the second named storm of the year and Brrr! it is really cold out there. We are due to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary shortly and all I want to do is sit at home and stay warm. I didn't pick up a bead for ages and ages after I got back from India in late December - I decided to go with the flow and let the need to create be the driving force. It wasn't until I was clearing out my drawer that I found these and put them together. I hope you like the first necklace of 2024. Seafoam Sonata 2Making this piece was a good antidote to the dreariness that is outside our windows - thoughts of floaty white dresses, strolling along a beachfront, cocktails on a balmy evening, cruise liners - my imagination was taking off on a daydream, which in my opinion is the best way to spend the rest of the winter. I have one more piece that has been created in my mind's eye and I've been collecting the 'ingredients' together. As we are back out in India shortly, it will be a simple but effective piece that I hope to finish before we leave. Have a wonderful week folks, and be sure to wrap up warm. Hospitals are busting at the seams and this is not a good time to fall ill. Enjoy yourselves, and I'll catch you soon.
Until then xx Hello everyone, Caprilicious Jewellery wishes you all a very Happy New Year. May the coming year be full of grand adventures and opportunities and the world be a better place to live in. 2023 has been dire for some countries around the world and for the economies of many. Covid was bad enough, but no one could have imagined that there were lower depths to which humanity could sink. However, here we are at the end of 2023, and many people are worse off than they were after the pandemic. As a glass half full person myself, I'm hoping for peace around the world this year - it's time we cast aside hatred for people who do not think or pray in the same way that we do and embrace humanity as a whole. Spare a thought for those who are suffering at this time in lands far away from the greed of their leaders, hungry for power, money and land, who are using their people as pawns in their shameless manipulations. Leaders the world over appear to be moving politically to the right, which is a scary prospect for the rest of us. I've been back from India for just about a week and have suffered terribly with jet lag - I have a couple of days off in the first week of January and then my nose goes back to the grindstone with a vengeance. I have a couple of months of hard work, and then go back to India again for my nephews wedding, this time with hubby in tow. I thought I'd show you some of my pieces from 2023, a lot of which are sold out - I met a few of my supporters in India and they got snapped up so quickly that I was surprised at how soon they flew off my shelves. This is a medley of those that are still on the shelves and some that were sold on earlier in the year. Clicking on the pictures will take you to the item, if still in the shop, and the use of the code HAPPY2024 at checkout will get you a 20% discount on everything on my pages till the end of January '24 - a HAPPY NEW YEAR, indeed!! Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year filled with hope, health, and happiness - with a generous sprinkle of fun, jewellery, and all the little things that make life worthwhile. Have a wonderful celebration and I'll catch up with you in 2024.
Until then, xx Hello folks, how are you? Caprilicious wishes you a very Merry Christmas and I hope you are all having a fun time, eating and drinking and enjoying yourselves. As you know, I've been in India for the last three weeks celebrating a wedding and an engagement with my family. Once I get back I have precisely eight weeks to pack up and go back for the second family wedding, this time hopefully with hubby in tow. Poor Michael had to be left behind on this trip, and unfortunately it was my fault. In the scrum to get all my work done before I left, I didn't check his e-visa as scrupulously as I should have - how was I to know that the idiots would use his surname twice on the visa, rather than his first/last names. We got to the airport and tried to check in only to be turned away - many £'s and much agonising later, I rebooked his ticket for the second wedding in March and carried on on my own to this one. It was really sad, but there was nothing else I could do - the small print says it is our look out to check all the details are correct and I didn't - one of the priciest mistakes I have made in my life, and not one that will be repeated in a hurry. My sister, whose daughter was getting wed, is married to a retired Brigadier in the Indian Army and the events were held over four days at venues in the army cantonement in Pune. His entire unit were there for a four day celebration and those guys could sure party. They carried on drinking and dancing into the wee hours every night even after the hosts went home pleading exhaustion and the necessity to catch a few Z's so that they were ready for the next mornings events. All my cousins (and there are a lot of them) flew up from Bangalore and we had a fun time. Here are some pictures for you. The next day there was a ceremony where the bride was anointed with turmeric and sandalwood paste - a throwback to the days when tropical infections were rife and they tried to keep the happy couple safe by applying antiseptic solutions onto the body to keep them well. The bride was a good sport and allowed us all to go one by one and paint her with this thick yellow paste - and then her friends came along and covered her with marigold petals. Poor girl, she smiled bravely through it all and remained good humoured. That evening we were invited to the function where the bride and guests are painted with henna designs, or mehndi - there were two artists who sat over our hands and feet for hours, meticulously drawing away with a fine nibbed bag of henna paste- almost like icing a cake.
And then, the wedding! We insisted that my sister have her make up applied professionally and I think she looked great. Everyone said they could see the resemblance between us, although it used to be much more pronounced when we were younger and I thought we had grown out of it. The groom arrived too, and the ceremony took a couple of hours - but when they eventually walked around the ceremonial fire seven times, it was done and dusted! They were now Mr and Mrs. All the men had turbans tied by a professional - the guys from Bangalore really enjoyed that as we do not have that custom down in the South of India. There was a party that night, held on the shores of a lake in the College of Military Engineering - it was so cold, my teeth were chattering. I didn't expect that sort of weather and consequently we left early - by early, I mean around 2 am - the army folk were still dancing the night away. However, we went to our hotel and continued the party in my cousins room, till all of a sudden we realised it was 5am and we scrambled to bed so we could be ready for whatever the next day threw at us. And then it was time to pack up and go back to Bangalore. My nephew had just got engaged, and that was celebrated with yet another party. These two will be getting married in March and I plan to go back - I need an eight week break as we will have the same celebration, in a South Indian style. I will be going through Mike's Visa with a fine tooth comb and hopefully we will make it there without any problems. Have a Merry Chirstmas and a fabulous Holiday Season!
That's me for this week, folks. I'll be back home tomorrow and will catch up with you shortly. Until then xx Hello, lovely people, how are you today? It's freezing out doors and I am tucked up under a warm fleece, watching TV and playing with wire and beads. Mike and I are off to India soon, to my neices wedding, and I'm really looking forward to the warmth of the sunshine and the fabulous colours and food back home. I'm sure I'll have many photographs to show you when I get back. In the meantime, I had a few pieces I decided to make to take back with me, so that is what I've done all week. I have some people in mind for each piece, so I haven't put them on the website yet. However, if they do not get picked up in India for one reason or another, I will put them on when I get back. I bought some mother of pearl leaves a few months ago - I've been meaning to make them up, but something else always got in the way. They are weightless and shine with an ethereal inner light. Cutting through the shells is a laborious process and the dust is toxic, which makes them relatively expensive, but still, oh so beautiful. Have a look and see what you think. These are the larger pair of the two, and are approximately 3" long and 2" wide - the pearls are a bit heavy on the ear, so I put them on stud findings so that they don't tear the earlobe. These are 2" long with tiny garnet teardrop beads, all in silver, with silver ear-wires. I also had a pair of dried red rose buds, dipped in resin - I put them on long kidney wires made of hypoallergenic stainless steel, and wrapped tiny labradorite beads onto the ear wires themselves. Red and grey is a fabulous combination, especially if the grey has unexpected flashes of light when you move your head. I thought that this was all I was going to make, when a parcel arrived from Hong-Kong with the prettiest beads I've ever seen. The manufacturer cut amethyst beads into tooth like nuggets and heat-treated them - the final treatment was a turquoise blue dye. I'm always a sucker for the combination of turquoise and amethyst and simply had to make this into a necklace as soon as I opened the package, it was too compelling to wait any longer. Tiny 2mm pearls and pyrite beads space the beads out, and a 'lost wax' cast Kenyan sun bronze bead is a focal point. I am really looking forward to my holiday - work has been hard, but enjoyable, and now it's time for a break. A wedding is always fun and it will be great to see my family again in happy circumstances. Missing three weeks of cold weather in the UK is an added bonus!
That's me for now, folks. Have a wonderful week, and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx |
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